Hiya! I noticed you are new here. If you like what you read, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

My husband and I are built differently, (and I’m not just referring to gender.)

At the moment, he is in the process of interviewing for a position as an assistant store manager at Target. While, for him, this is a great job, you couldn’t pick a worse one for me! I wouldn’t be cut out for 50 hour work week’s and 15 hour a week commutes, making a salary of $40,000 a year come out to only $11.50 an hour. And that’s only because I’m home watching the kiddo! Imagine so many mom’s out there taking jobs that seem like a decent amount of money for some one in their twenties, like the above 40K. Imagine the same commute and $12,000 a year in preschool. Do you know how much the “real” salary would come out to? If I’ve done the math right, it’s about 10-15K a year! You could almost make that much working 25 hours a week at Starbucks in the evenings!

While I support my business major, retail background husband in his pursuits, I’m also amazed at the difference between those who are entrepreneurial minded verses those who are employee minded. There’s nothing I want more than to work less hours and make more money! I’ll teach myself whatever skills I have to learn to make that a reality, because the commutes and clocking-in are so.not.my.thing.

Doing the math on a commute alone, the average American commutes about 50 minutes a day to and from work, five days a week (according to a poll done by ABC). Let’s round that to an hour, from the time you leave your house the time you sit down at your desk in the office.

That’s an extra 5 hours a week, 260 hours a year.

260 hours a year that could be spent:

A. Working. (If you telecommute.) The average American makes about $20 an hour, (in 2005 the average salary in the U.S. was $45K.) If your the average US worker, that 260 hours commuting costs you $5,200 a year. Yep. Family vacation = *sounds of toilet flushing*

B. Spending time with family/children. (If you telecommute.) According to one report I read, the average working mother spends 5.8 waking hours with her children per day. But if you go to work from say, 7-5, and you have little one’s who go down at, say, 7 pm, I can’t image the number being higher than 3 on a work day. And is it possible to spend those 3 hours in quality mother/child time? Or are you unwinding, making dinner, and hauling off to bed? Now, telecommuting moms might still need some childcare, and they definitely don’t spend all day with the kids! But if you just take back that one hour of commuting, if we JUST focus on that one hour per day, already you can see a better way to spend 260 hours a year!

C. Doing whatever the heck you want to. (If you telecommute.) Maybe you live alone and those 260 hours are all your own. Maybe you want to spend 5 hours a week volunteering or participating in your favorite hobby!

For a 1.5 hour each way commute to work, which will likely be what entails a job at Target for Hubby, that’s 15 hours a week (the equivalent of a part-time job!) and 780 hours a year. 46, 800 minutes a year on the road. (Thank you, contributors to global warming!) And likely a lot of money on your vehicle’s insurance, gas and maintenace. A monthly bus pass for Hubby is about the lowest commute cost you could have- $1,200 a year. But take that off that salary, people. THINK about it.

I am so so so (did I say SO?) glad to wake up in the morning, put my slippers on, brush my teeth, make some coffee, and open my laptop. Bam. That’s my commute.

Telecommuting HAS ITS CONS. Especially being a work at home mom! Buuuuuut…

I’ll never say the grass is greener on the other side

Popularity: 67% [?]

Technorati Tags: salary, mom, money, commute, preschool, entrepreneurial, employee, skills, American, house, office, global warming, gas